thats russias fault.
Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The power of democracy isn't the debates and election campaigns. That's mostly theater. The power of democracy is the peaceful way to change the government after it fucks up. This is also an illusion democracy is also tyranny of majority in which minority or minority views trampled. Shining example is USA, India. US waged war killed scores of civilians in so many countries and still a beacon of democracy, India an…
Better tyranny of the majority than tyranny of the one.
> Better tyranny of the majority than tyranny of the one.
There is nothing like tyranny of one. Its always Tyranny of interest groups, which is true in any system including democratic system where rich and powerful controls most.
Today most of the US elections are controlled by billionaires and who is going to win depends on their blessings. Same is true for India.
US, India represent the majority of the human population under democratic system and how it works.
Look at any HDI or UN statistics that matter and see the conditions on largest human population on one side represented by democratic India and on another side by a closed system in China (people call it authoritarian, although its a mixture of many systems). Examine closely and you will notice both the systems work in some areas and fail in others, no one can claim superiority over other system. But a narrative of good vs evil, superior vs inferior is a root cause of conflicts. If people began to see things from humanity’s perspective with respect of each other world would be a different place.
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. Solution to armed conflict is not more armed conflict by supporting one group against another with weapons of destruction.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better tyranny of the majority than tyranny of the one.
> Better tyranny of the majority than tyranny of the one. There is nothing like tyranny of one. Its always Tyranny of interest groups, which is true in any system including democratic system where rich and powerful controls most. Today most of the US elections are controlled by billionaires and who is going to win depends on their blessings. Same is true for India. US, India represent the majority of the human popula…
> no one can claim superiority over other system.
no, but looking at immigration levels between the systems, it's clear what people prefer.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#24You know how you can tell you have a good propaganda machine? It's when you launch a war, your poll ratings shoot up. When you kill loads of people in your war, it doesn't come out in the newspapers, it comes out in the Lancet, two years after all the depleted-uranium dust has settled. That's the first gulf war. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is honestly the worst war from a propaganda perspective, for th…
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Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#25While what you are saying may be true, you shouldn’t look to the west for answers. The idea that we pick our leaders based on political debates is ridiculous. Just look at how our debates are structured. If they are lucky, candidates have two minutes to describe their approach to fixing something like income inequality or climate change which have been around for decades. Certain candidates are purposely given more a…
West is closer. You’re not 100% wrong. But “ Here in the U.S. people inherently trust the media and the government as being the arbitrators of truth and righteousness” has not been true for quite a long time. I was stunned that anyone believed Colin Powell’s obvious b.s., now with Colin Powell and Mike Pompeo the crap about West Point being related to “honor” is clearly visible as crap too. If you are a Trumpian you…
Yeah, I was going to make a similar response. Like you pointed out, if anything 'trust in the media and government' has eroded so much its fallen into complete absurdity. Of course skepticism should always be exercised when consuming anything --media, politicians, etc-- but how the eff phenomena like 'Q', Sandy Hook deniers, 'stop the steal' (etc etc) could possibly gain traction as movements suggests parts of society are so preemptively distrustful they're actually losing grip on reality.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#26You know how you can tell you have a good propaganda machine? It's when you launch a war, your poll ratings shoot up. When you kill loads of people in your war, it doesn't come out in the newspapers, it comes out in the Lancet, two years after all the depleted-uranium dust has settled. That's the first gulf war. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is honestly the worst war from a propaganda perspective, for th…
No post body was provided.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#27You know how you can tell you have a good propaganda machine? It's when you launch a war, your poll ratings shoot up. When you kill loads of people in your war, it doesn't come out in the newspapers, it comes out in the Lancet, two years after all the depleted-uranium dust has settled. That's the first gulf war. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is honestly the worst war from a propaganda perspective, for th…
Almost all of the 50-100,000 civilians killed as a consequence of the Gulf War were killed by Saddam Hussein putting down an insurgency. (Direct civilian losses by the hands of the invading force were less than 4,000.) That the U.S. gave the impression they would support an insurgency and then left those people to be slaughtered by Hussein became a not insignificant piece of moral propaganda used by Dick Cheney, Ahme…
> (Direct civilian losses by the hands of the invading force were less than 4,000.)
I can see that, in terms of direct civilian losses, the first gulf war was mild. However, I don't think it's in any way reasonable to only count direct deaths in a war that was devastating to civilian infrastructure.
While the effect of the war itself was muddied by the sanctions regime (which killed an enormous number of people), bombing civilian infrastructure obviously has a negative effect on civilian life expectancy. Academic treatments tend to push the numbers a lot higher (hundreds of thousands) due to the increases in child mortality, excess deaths, etc in post-war Iraq.
As for the DUP stuff, I don't have any particularly complex opinion. It seems somewhat obvious to me that heavy metals are typically poisonous, alpha-particle emitters are extremely poisonous, so my tendency would be to assume that spraying depleted uranium about is going to cause negative health outcomes, probably including cancer.
Personally, I think there is some merit to the idea of the first gulf war as a well-executed war, and if I was living in Iraq, I would probably rather live through that war than the 2003 invasion, or any number of other wars in the 20th century.
That said, if you compare two similar wars in terms of direct civilian casualty counts (Gulf war (3,664), Russo-Ukrainian war (3,393 so far)), the narrative could not be more different.
What's interesting about the first gulf war to me is not really the casualty counts (fairly typical, on all scales, to conflicts of a similar duration and intensity) but rather the success of the new model (embedded reporters, 24/7 news coverage) in controlling the media narrative.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better tyranny of the majority than tyranny of the one.
> Better tyranny of the majority than tyranny of the one. There is nothing like tyranny of one. Its always Tyranny of interest groups, which is true in any system including democratic system where rich and powerful controls most. Today most of the US elections are controlled by billionaires and who is going to win depends on their blessings. Same is true for India. US, India represent the majority of the human popula…
> There is nothing like tyranny of one. Its always Tyranny of interest groups
The "interest groups" that rule Russia is less than 100 people. It's not the same as interest groups in democracies.
> Look at any HDI or UN statistics that matter and see the conditions on largest human population on one side represented by democratic India and on another side by a closed system in China.
India would have to kill millions of its own citizens to get equally bad as China. But you probably don't consider how it was created, just the end effect, right? What's a few millions dead here and there if they can build cheap factories :)
> But a narrative of good vs evil, superior vs inferior is a root cause of conflicts.
Killing innocent people is in fact evil. Systems where you can do that with no consequences are in fact inferior.
And the root of all conflict is politicians starting wars because they think they can get away with it. The narratives are always there, with any implication you want, you just have to choose one and decide to go with it.
The big advantage of democracy is that you don't (in general) get away with it. You can for a while, but not forever.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#29You know how you can tell you have a good propaganda machine? It's when you launch a war, your poll ratings shoot up. When you kill loads of people in your war, it doesn't come out in the newspapers, it comes out in the Lancet, two years after all the depleted-uranium dust has settled. That's the first gulf war. In comparison, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is honestly the worst war from a propaganda perspective, for th…
Quoted post unavailable.
> Naturally, most of these media projects are run by Jews and promote the same neoliberal agenda that their cousins in the West promote.
Eugh. Nice to see links containing explicit antisemitism on HN.
Re: Hi, I’m Russian. The West doesn’t realize the good and the bad news about Russia
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't even understand what you have. The power of democracy isn't the debates and election campaigns. That's mostly theater. The power of democracy is the peaceful way to change the government after it fucks up. When McCarthy did red scare he lost without a revolution. When Nixon did Watergate he lost without a revolution. When Bush lied about Iraq WMDs - he lost without a revolution. They could lie for a while,…
> The power of democracy is the peaceful way to change the government after it fucks up. This is a very important point I didn't understand before thinking about some things David Deutsch said. Debates don't convince many people, only clearly terrible policies do. And being able to peacefully switch out the goverenment is a great advantage.
It's a very important point, because all political careers end in failure. Why? Because those bent on the having and holding of power never willingly take their hands of the levers of power. They must be removed, and the great advantage of democracy is that is has made that process peaceful.